Subaru emerged among the top automakers in crash tests of model-year 2012 cars and trucks conducted by a U.S. insurance industry group.

Subaru, a unit of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., is the sole maker to have all of its 2012 models earn the grade, the institute said in an e-mailed statement today.

More vehicles won the ranking this year after manufacturers redesigned roofs to make them stronger in rollovers, the Arlington, Virginia-based insurance group said. Sixty-nine cars, 38 SUVs, 5 minivans and 3 pickups made the list after tests evaluating passenger safety in front, side and rear crashes, as well as rollovers.

“Commitment to protecting people in crashes is evident in the fast pace of design improvements automakers have made during the past year,” the institute said in the statement.

A record number of models qualified for a second consecutive year, Adrian Lund, president of the group, said in the statement. One hundred 2011 model-year vehicles received the top rating, according to the statement.

Subaru of Indiana Automotive Inc. in Lafayette will be featured this week on the cable channel SCIENCE. Thursday’s episode of “How Do They Do It” will show viewers how a Subaru is built from beginning to end. Last month, a production crew, sent by Discovery Communications Inc. spent two days shooting video footage at SIA.

Have you ever wondered how a car goes from a coil of steel to a finished vehicle all under one roof? Subaru of Indiana Automotive, Inc. (SIA) will be featured in this week’s episode of “How Do They Do It” which airs Thursday, October 27 at 10:00 PM (EST) on SCIENCE. Viewers will get a glimpse at some of the processes and people that help SIA build approximately 250,000 vehicles every
year.

Last month, a production crew sent by Discovery Communications spent two days shooting video footage of the production process at SIA. The result is a comprehensive look at how a Subaru is built beginning
with coils of steel and ending with a new Legacy, Outback or Tribeca being driven off the line. Viewers will also see some of the rigorous testing procedures that every Subaru undergoes before being sent to
dealerships across the U.S. “How Do They Do It” is a documentary-style program that goes behind the scenes to discover how to do
the things, and make the things that form the modern world. The “How Do They Do It” episode featuring SIA can be viewed this Thursday at 10:00 PM (EST) on SCIENCE.

Subaru’s EyeSight, Subaru’s third generation safety system will be launched in Australia later this year. Australia is the first overseas market for this advanced technology. EyeSight has already enjoyed major sales success in Japan.

EyeSight is a driver assistance system that combines active, passive and preventive safety technologies. It uses small stereo cameras located in a single compact unit near the rear-view mirror to recognise any potential road hazards and alert the driver.

EyeSight is a testament to Subaru’s long-term safety commitment, in addition to its independent five-star ratings for occupant safety across all its models. This rating has been awarded by the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAR).

This advanced safety system has seven key functions that include the following:

1. Pre-crash braking – the brakes are applied when a vehicle ahead in detected slowing or suddenly stopping and the driver had failed to apply the brakes.

2. Pre-crash brake assist – the system can generate 1G maximum deceleration top help reduce impact or damage when it senses that a collision is highly likely to occur.

3. Progressive start control – in the event that a driver accidentally applies full throttle close to a large object in front of the car, EyeSight will inhibit the throttle opening, minimising or potentially avoiding impact.

4. Adaptive cruise control – the system is able to maintain a safe distance from vehicles in front.

5. Lane departure warning – EyeSight alerts the driver if the car is drifting across from its lane.

6. Vehicle sway warning – the system alerts the driver if the car is beginning to sway from one side of the road to another.

7. Progressive motion monitor – when the vehicle in front starts to move, EyeSight alerts the driver with an audible reminder and information display indicator that the vehicle ahead has moved.

With its advanced technology in safety and impact prevention, EyeSight is indeed a feature that future Subaru owners can look forward to.

According to Nick Senior, Managing Director of Subaru Australia,“We will introduce EyeSight as a standard feature in Some Liberty and Outback models later this year.

“EyeSight has been a major success in Japan, where more than 50 per cent of Liberty models are now sold with the system.”

EyeSight is designed to protect drivers from frontal collisions, lane drifting and low speed impact. It can also recognise pedestrians, motorcycles and cyclists within its field of vision.

A Really Green Plant

Subaru of Indiana makes cars (not garbage)

At Subaru’s giant automotive plant in Lafayette, Ind., there’s one subject that everyone, from assembly-line worker to corporate exec, loves to discuss: garbage. “We’ll talk trash all day,” admitted Denise Coogan, Subaru’s manager of safety and environmental compliance. It’s no wonder that refuse is such a hot topic here. In May of 2004 (an anniversary marked every year with great pride and lots of hoopla), Subaru of Indiana Automotive, Subaru’s only plant in the U.S., became the first automaker in the country to achieve “zero-landfill” status — meaning it sends no waste to a landfill.

Zero. Nada.

That’s less than even the smallest of households. It’s a goal that was reached only with the commitment and support of every member of the staff. In fact, eliminating, recycling and reusing even the smallest bits of would-be garbage are approached with an almost religious fervor among the 3,273 employees.

Subaru has long been environmentally conscious. But it wasn’t until 2002, the year before Subaru parent Fuji Heavy Industries became sole owner of the Lafayette plant, that it began focusing in earnest on a zero-landfill goal. This year, the plant is right on track to produce 230,000 cars, including Outback, Legacy and Tribeca vehicles and even some Toyota Camrys. Of all the garbage produced in the process, 99.9% is recycled or reused. The other 0.1% is sent for incineration.

But the company’s greening goes even further: The 832-acre plant site is a designated wildlife habitat, dotted with ponds, walking trails and thick woods, and populated by wildlife, including beavers, deer and coyotes. There’s even a blue heron sanctuary inside the facility’s test track, where bald eagles regularly stop by for a visit, not far from their nesting area at the nearby Wabash River. It’s as much a biosphere reserve as an automotive plant.

“We pushed for zero-landfill because we knew it was the right thing to do for the environment,” explained Tom Easterday, Subaru of Indiana Automotive’s senior vice president. There’s a robust automotive scrapping and recycling industry in the United States, he said, but in 2004 no one had figured out how to deal with the waste created at the beginning of the vehicle’s life cycle. The company needed to find a way, in Easterday’s words, “to eliminate things being put in the ground, air or water that could cause risk to the environment.”

Enlisting help from employees early on, “we started dumpster diving,” Easterday said. Plant managers spread out a bunch of the plant’s trash to get a good look at what they were throwing away. Then they started figuring out what could be done with it. They pretty quickly identified a number of items that could be reused or recycled: The brass lug nuts used to hold wheels in place during shipping were being tossed in the garbage — to the tune of 33,000 pounds of brass per year. They are now reused until they’re no longer serviceable, then they’re recycled. Bottle caps of all sorts, once considered trash, are now reused (last year 567,700 were sent back to suppliers). Solvents used in the painting process are cleaned and recovered through the plant’s on-site recovery system, and the paint shop then reuses them. Even paint sludge gets put to use: It’s dried and mixed with plastic compounds, then transformed into useful things such as parking-spot barriers.

Though Subaru of Indiana initially spent millions on its recycling programs, the results have saved the company about $2.5 million per year. So why don’t many more companies hop on the environmental bandwagon? “People still think that it costs too much money to be environmentally friendly,” said Coogan, a self-described “closet tree-hugger” from way back. “That’s an antiquated idea. Waste is money: wasted time, wasted material. The first years cost us financially, but after you get over that hump, you see the [monetary gains] take off exponentially. It takes patience and an upper management that’s committed to doing this.”

“We’re hoping eventually to turn the rust belt to the green belt,” said Easterday.

Subaru of America, Inc. today announced that for the second consecutive year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has recognized it as the only automotive manufacturer with a 2011 TOP SAFETY PICK winner in every vehicle class in which it competes.

“We know our customers take their safety very seriously and so we are very pleased that IIHS has recognized us again as the only manufacturer with a TOP SAFETY PICK winner for all its models,” said Tom Doll, executive vice president and COO, Subaru of America, Inc. “This is an outstanding success and a tribute to the engineering that goes into our products. The IIHS reinforces to our customers that Subaru maintains the highest standards to produce vehicles that are fun-to- drive, durable, reliable as well as safe. ”

The TOP SAFETY PICK recognizes vehicles that, in IIHS testing, do the best job of protecting people in front, side, rear, and now rollover crashes based on ‘good’ ratings in each category. The IIHS ranks in terms of Good, Acceptable, Marginal and Poor, with ‘good’ as the top rank possible in Institute tests. Winners also must have electronic stability control.

“Subaru is the only manufacturer with a TOP SAFETY PICK winner in every vehicle class in which it competes,” said IIHS president Adrian Lund. “The vehicles that earn this designation are the cream of the crop for protecting people in the most common kinds of crashes, and they have electronic stability control for helping drivers stay out of many crashes altogether.”

About IIHS

The Institute’s frontal crashworthiness evaluations are based on results of 40 mph frontal offset crash tests. Each vehicle’s overall evaluation is based on measurements of intrusion into the occupant compartment, injury measures recorded on a Hybrid III dummy in the driver seat, and analysis of slow-motion film to assess how well the restraint system controlled dummy movement during the test.

Side evaluations are based on performance in a crash test in which the side of a vehicle is struck by a barrier moving at 31 mph. The barrier represents the front end of a pickup or SUV. Ratings reflect injury measures recorded on 2-instrumented SID-IIs dummies representing a small (5th percentile) woman, assessment of head protection countermeasures, and the vehicle’s structural performance during the impact.

Rear crash protection is rated according to a two-step procedure. Starting points for the ratings are measurements of head restraint geometry — the height of a restraint and its horizontal distance behind the back of the head of an average size man. Seat/head restraints with good or acceptable geometry are tested dynamically using a dummy that measures forces on the neck. This test simulates a collision in which a stationary vehicle is struck in the rear at 20 mph. Seats without good or acceptable geometry are rated poor overall because they can’t be positioned to protect many people.

In the roof strength test, a metal plate is pushed against 1 side of a roof at a constant speed. To earn a good rating for rollover protection, the roof must withstand a force of 4 times the vehicle’s weight before reaching 5 inches of crush. This is called a strength-to-weight ratio. For an acceptable rating, the minimum required strength-to-weight ratio is 3.25. A marginal rating value is 2.5. Anything lower than that is rated poor.

TOP SAFETY PICKs 2010

To determine crashworthiness — how well a vehicle protects its occupants in a crash — the Institute rates vehicles good, acceptable, marginal, or poor based on performance in high-speed front and side crash tests, a rollover test, plus evaluations of seat/head restraints for protection against neck injuries in rear impacts. To earn TOP SAFETY PICK for 2010 a vehicle must have good ratings in all four Institute tests. In addition, the winning vehicles must offer electronic stability control